The Week in Review: February 16th, 2014

I went exploring this week! Thanks, adventures in insurance! I discovered the exact kind of raggedy, piles to the ceiling geek book/music store that I adore in Black and Read, bought a pair of golden boots, and then I wandered into the biggest King Soopers I’ve ever seen in my life, where I encountered this pun.

Visual effects artist NeonVisual has designed some credits for the Twelfth Doctor. Watch it in the highest resolution possible; it’s quite good work.

IDW Publishing has a Star Trek comic out based on the reboot. For issues twenty-nine and thirty, the comic will be featuring a story where the cast’s genders are flipped. You can see a few panels featuring all of the cast (Chekov is adorable) here. Annalee at Geek Feminism has a review of the first part of the story here. I’ve soured on the reboot, as you well know, but I really love that an official comic is utilizing the time-honored gender flip.

As exciting as Anansi Boys coming to the small screen is, this week’s alarm has been pounded for Red Flag, a potential television series about legendary Chinese pirate Ching Shih, to be played by Maggie Q. Of course, it is important to point out that Q has Vietnamese heritage, not Chinese. In a perfect world, this would be the same as Daniel Day Lewis playing Lincoln, but it comes to us in the larger context of Hollywood treating Asia as a single group. I look forward to discussion on this from people much more qualified than I to talk about it.

Noelle Stevenson, professional comic artist and writer, discusses going into a comic book store to pick up some copies of published work by both her and her friends only to be demeaned by the staff. A self-identified male nerd rolls his eyes at Stevenson feeling intimidated by the staff, attitudes towards women in the industry, and the sheer backlog of comments, and then she takes him to task.

Before Netflix pulled most of Saturday Night Live (YOU ARE DEAD TO ME how about a round of In the Loop?), I was having so much fun rediscovering Will Forte and his delightfully bizarre but always sweet sense of humor. So I’m very happy that his new show, Last Man on Earth, was picked up by Fox. I’m there with bells on.

Brooks Wheelan is one of the newest additions to Saturday Night Live, but the sheer number of new recruits has made it hard for any of them to get screen time. But this—a video composed of several seconds filmed each day for a year, inspired by somebody else—is just breathtaking. It covers Wheelan’s California life as an engineer by day and comedian by night and then his hiring at Saturday Night Live. It’s really touching, poignant, and fun. I went from tearing up over just how badly I want to live in New York to mock-raging over being robbed of another J-Pop America Fun Time Now! sketch.

In Greek mythology, Iambe was the woman who cheered Demeter up from being sad about, you know, her daughter being trapped in the Underworld with a bawdy joke. She’s also the namesake of the iambic pentameter! Given the maturity level of the jokes I hurl at the television screen, I’m awfully fond of Iambe at the moment.

Reddit user ObscenePenguin responds to a young man complaining of being in “the friendzone” with the counter concept of “girlfriendzoning”—that horrible feeling a straight woman has when she has to reevaluate an entire friendship with a straight man to see whether or not he was just trying to get into her pants instead of actually being her friend. This is what you get when you live in a society that tells you men and women can’t be friends and that romantic love always supersedes friendship. BOO.

Ellen Page came out! Go Team Queer! A lot of people have been pointing out how interesting her coming out is, since it’s video and not text. It’s a thoughtful speech and touches on how much of a relief it is to come out.

The Criterion Collection does gorgeous, gorgeous work, but I think it’s easy to forget how much work goes into restoring the classic films that they release. This video covers that process and the process of designing their stunning DVD covers.

Post navigation

4 thoughts on “The Week in Review: February 16th, 2014”

1) I also look forward to the conversations about casting a half-Vietnamese lady as a Chinese pirate and all the Hollywood badness around race; those conversations are invariably interesting. 2) I would looooove for Maggie Q to be back on our screens doing piratey deeds!

I would also like a word for when it becomes obvious that a guy feels he has been pandering to you by talking to you about things he thinks you will be interested in when you thought you were actually becoming friends. That’s a good one too.